第3章 第7節 告発
The Accusation
At dawn Nora set the open logbook on the table between them.
"You called Edwin the night my mother died," she said. "Explain that."
Gabriel looked at the page for a long time before he spoke.
"I wondered if you would find it," he said. "I hoped you would not."
"So you it," Nora said, and her voice was harder than the sea.
"I made the call," he answered. "I will not what my own hand wrote."
"But you have decided already why I made it, and you have decided wrong."
He told her that he had not phoned Edwin to her mother.
He had phoned, he said, to warn Marion through the only line he had.
"Edwin's house was the one place I knew she had gone that night."
"I begged whoever answered to tell her to run before it was too late."
Nora searched his face and found no , no crack, no lie.
"Then why write his ?" she asked. "Why not write hers?"
"Because the call went to his number," Gabriel said. "The truth is ."
He had warned her, and hours later the town had called Marion drowned.
"I have carried that call for twenty years," he said, "like a stone."
"I told myself I saved her, and I never truly believed it."
Then his eyes changed, and he leaned toward the logbook again.
"There is something I did not know until this moment," he said slowly.
"That night, the line clicked twice before anyone spoke to me."
"Someone had lifted another . Someone was listening on the line."
Nora felt the cold return, sharper now, and more .
A third person had heard the warning meant to save her mother.
"Whoever that was," Gabriel whispered, "knew before Edwin ever did."